Fans found it surprising in 1980 when Kubrick turned out a movie that was
apparently no more than a horror film. The action took place at the
Overlook Hotel in Colorado, where the winter caretaker, a chilling Jack
Nicholson, became progressively madder and tried to murder his wife and
his telepathic son. But The Shining is not really about the murders
at the Overlook Hotel. It is about the murder of a race -- the race of
Native Americans -- and the consequences of that murder.

The Calumet Connection

If you are skeptical about this, consider the Calumet baking powder
cans with their Indian chief logo that Kubrick placed carefully in the two
food-locker scenes. (A calumet is a peace pipe.) Consider the Indian
motifs that decorate the hotel, and the way they serve as background in
many of the key scenes. Consider the insertion of two lines, early in the
film, describing how the hotel was built on an Indian burial ground. These
are "confirmers" such as puzzle-makers often use to tell you you're on the
right track. The Shining is also explicitly about America's general
inability to admit to the gravity of the genocide of the Indians -- or,
more exactly, its ability to "overlook" that genocide. Not only is the
site called the Overlook Hotel with its Overlook Maze, but one of the key
scenes takes place at the July 4th Ball. That date, too, has particular
relevance to American Indians. That's why Kubrick made a movie in which
the American audience sees signs of Indians in almost every frame, yet
never really sees what the movie's about. The film's very relationship to
its audience is thus part of the mirror that this movie full of mirrors
holds up to the nature of its audience.

Bloody Empire

The film is about how the all-male British military establishment,
itself forged in bloody empire-building, passed on to its off-spring
continental empire, the United States, certain timeworn army-building
methods, including separating weak males from the balancing influence of
their more sensitive womenfolk and children. The Shining is also
about America's current racism, particularly against blacks. Stuart Ullman
tells the caretaker's wife Wendy in the only lines in the film in which
the Indians are mentioned. Ullman says, "The site is supposed to be
located on an Indian burial ground, and I believe they actually had to
repel a few Indian attacks as they were building it." This bit of dialogue
does not appear in Stephen King's novel The Shining. The first and
most frequently seen of the film's very real American "ghosts" is the
flooding river of blood that wells out of the elevator shaft, which
presumably sinks into the Indian burial ground itself. The blood squeezes
out in spite of the fact that the red doors are kept firmly shut within
their surrounding Indian artwork embellished frames. We never hear the
rushing blood. It is a mute nightmare. It is the blood upon which this
nation, like most nations, was built, as was the Overlook Hotel.

No Actual Indians

Indian artwork appear throughout the movie in wall hangings, carpets,
architectural details and even the Colorado state flag. Yet we never meet
an actual Indian. But we do get to know, and like, and then see murdered,
a powerful black character, Chef Hallorann -- the only person to die in
the film other that the protagonist, villain and victim, Jack. The
murdered black man lies across a large Indian design on the floor --
victim of similar racist violence. Kubrick carefully controls every aspect
of his films' releases, including the publicity. The posters for The
Shining that were used in Europe read across the top, "The wave of
terror which swept across America," and centered below that, the two word
"is here." At first glance this seemed to be a poster bragging about the
film's effect on America. But the film wasn't out yet when the posters
first appeared. The wave of terror that swept across America was the white
man. As manager Ullman says in the opening interview, after telling Jack
of the horrible murders that took place earlier in the Overlook, "It's
still hard for me to believe it actually happened here, but it did." The
type of people who partied in the Overlook included, as Ullman tells Jack
and Wendy, "four presidents, movie stars." And when the impressed Wendy
asks, "Royalty?" Ullman replies simply, "All the best people." King's
novel has nothing to do with any of these themes. As he has with other
books that gave their titles to his movies, Kubrick used the general
setting and some of the elements of King's novel, while drastically
altering other elements and ignoring much of it, to suit the needs of the
multi-film oeuvre about mankind's inhumanity to man that he's been making
at least since Dr. Strangelove.

Visual Puzzle

As with some of his other movies, Kubrick ends The Shining with
a powerful visual puzzle that forces the audience to leave the theater
asking, "What was that all about?" The Shining ends with an
extremely long camera shot moving down a hallway in the Overlook, reaching
eventually the central photo among 21 photos on the wall. The caption
reads: "Overlook Hotel-July 4th Ball-1921." The answer to this puzzle,
which is a master key to unlocking the whole movie, is that most Americans
overlook the fact that July Fourth was no ball, nor any kind of
Independence day, for native Americans; that the weak American villain of
the film is the re-embodiment of the American men who massacred the
Indians in earlier years; that Kubrick is examining and reflecting on a
problem that cuts through the decades and centuries.

Sound of Moviegoers

And in a final stroke of brilliance, Kubrick physically melds the movie
audience leaving his film with the ghostly revelers in the photograph. As
the credits roll, the soundtrack ends, and we hear the 1920s audience
applaud, and then the gabble of that audience talking among themselves --
the same sound the crowd of moviegoers itself is probably making as it
leaves the theater. It is the sound of people moving out of one stage of
consciousness into another. The moviegoers are largely unaware of this
soundtrack, and this reflects their unawareness that they've just seen a
movie about themselves, about what people like them have done to the
American Indian and to others. Thus to its very last foot, this film is
trying to break through the complacency of its audience, to tell it, "You
were, are, the people at the Overlook Ball." The opening music, over the
traveling aerial shots of a tiny yellow Volkswagon penetrating the
magnificent American wilderness, is the "Dies Irae". At the end of the
movie, in the climactic chase in the Overlook Maze, the moral maze of
America and of all mankind in which we are chased by the sins of our
fathers ("Danny, I'm coming. You can't get away. I'm right behind you"),
the little boy Danny escapes by retracing his own steps (an old Indian
trick) and letting his father blunder past.

Maze and Hotel

Kubrick carefully equates the Overlook Maze with the Overlook Hotel, and
both with the American continent. Chef Hallorann emphasizes to Wendy the
size and abundance of the kitchens, remarks upon the extraordinary elbow
room (so attractive to early settlers) and begins his long catalog of its
storerooms' wealth with those most American of items: rib roast, hamburger
and turkey. The Calumet baking powder can first appears during Hallorann's
tour of the dairy goods storage locker. In a moment of cinematic beauty,
we are looking up at Hallorann from Danny's point of view. As Hallorann
tells Wendy about the riches of that locker, his voice fades as he turns
to look down at Danny and, while his lips are still moving with words of
the abundant supplies, Danny hears the first telepathic "shining" from
Hallorann's head as he says, "How'd you like some ice cream, Doc?" Visible
right behind Hallorann's head in that shot, on the shelf, is one can of
Calumet baking powder. This approach from the open, honest and charismatic
Hallorann to the brilliant young Danny is an honest treaty, and Danny will
indeed get his ice cream in the very next scene.

The other appearance of the Calumet baking cans is in the scene where
Jack, locked in the same dry-goods locker by his terrified wife, is
talking through the door to the very British voice of ghost Grady. Grady
speaking on behalf of the never identified "we," who seem to be powerful
people, is shaming Jack into trying to kill his wife and son. ("I and
others have come to believe that your heart is not in this, that you
haven't the belly for it." To which Jack replies, "Just give me one more
chance to prove it, Mr. Grady.") Visible just behind Jack's head as he
talks with Grady is a shelf piled with many Calumet baking powder cans,
none of them straight on, none easy to read. These are the many false
treaties, revoked in bloody massacre, that the U.S. government gave the
Indians, and that are symbolically represented in this movie by Jack's
rampage to kill his own family -- the act to which Grady is goading Jack
in this scene. Nor is the treaty between Grady and Jack any less
dishonest. For Jack will get no reward for doing Grady's bidding, but
rather will reap insanity and death.

Weak Males

Kubrick has sought to expose in several of his movies before this one
the delusionary tricks by which big powers get weak males to do brutal and
ultimately self-destructive battle. We never see ghost Grady in this
scene, but if we're wondering whether the voice of Grady is just in Jack's
head or comes from the "real" ghost who can do real damage, we are
chillingly convinced when we hear the pin being pulled out on the outside
latch of the locker door. All ghosts in this movie are real horrors in
America today, and indeed in most cultures present and past. The second
set of ghosts seen in the movie is that of the British twin girls --
Grady's murdered daughters, alike but not quite alike. The represent,
quite simply, duplicity, and not only the duplicity of the broken treaties
with the Indians. Only young Danny sees these twins; children have a
sensitivity to duplicity in the adult world around them. Kubrick is
examining in this movie not only the duplicity of individuals, but of
whole societies that manage to commit atrocities and then carry on as
though nothing were wrong. That's why there have been so many murders over
the years at the Overlook; man keeps killing his own family and forgetting
about it, and then doing it again. This is why, too, Jack has such a
powerful sense of deja vu when he arrives at the Overlook, as though "I'd
been here before." Later Grady tells him, "You are the caretaker (who
murdered his children). You've always been the caretaker." ("Born to kill"
perhaps, as the ads for Full Metal Jacket proclaim?) Kubrick is not
a moralist. He's an artist, a great one, and along with the greatest
artists he is holding the mirror up to nature, not judging it. Though he
has made here a movie about the arrival of Old World evils in America, he
is exploring most specifically an old question: Why do humans constantly
perpetuate such "inhumanity" against humans? That family is the family of
man.